(suspenseful music) (thunder cracks) (suspenseful music) - One night in 1799, Stutley Tillinghast is awoken from an unsettling dream. In the dream, Stutley looks out across his abundant, thriving apple orchard, and watches as half the orchard turns black and dies. In the years to come, this
dream would haunt Stutley. For, as the story goes, it would prove a portent
of things yet to come. (thunder cracks) Soon after the dream, his 22-year-old daughter, Sarah, became ill and died of tuberculosis, known at the time as consumption. (thunder cracks) Before another one of
Stutley's daughters died, she claimed that Sarah, who, remember, was already dead and buried, was coming in the night
and sitting on her chest, causing her terrible pain. Stutley's wife and his other children also experienced night
visitations from Sarah. When six of his 14 children were dead, half of his orchard, so to speak, Stutley, prodded by mounting
fear in the community, decided he must exhume his dead children to save those that were still alive. Why? - Say it. (suspenseful music) (Bella pants) - Vampire. - That's right. Vampires.
(thunder cracks) (dramatic music) (eerie music) (dramatic music)
(woman gasps) (Caitlin hisses) (thunder cracks) (dramatic boom) (ominous music) (music box chimes) - This tiny cemetery, now known as Rhode Island Historical
Cemetery Number 14 in Exeter is where Stutley Tillinghast exhumed the bodies of his children, in order to look for evidence of vampirism in the form of fresh blood
in the corpses' hearts. Most of the children's exhumations showed normal signs of
decomposition in the bodies. But Sarah Tillinghast? Her hair had kept growing. Her nails had kept growing. Her eyes were wide open. And most damning, her arteries and heart were
filled with fresh blood. Stutley cut out Sarah's heart and burned it on a rock
in front of his home, which, given what a small
family cemetery this is, was probably very nearby this area. Then he reburied Sarah
and her siblings here. (bell tolls) The prophecy of Stutley's
dream was being fulfilled. One of these unmarked graves here belongs to Sarah Tillinghast. So, how much of this Sarah
Tillinghast story is real? More of it than you would think. The historical record shows it's likely that fewer of the Tillinghast children actually died during this period. More like four children, not a full half the
family, as the story goes. But the exhuming of the bodies and burning the hearts
to prevent vampirism, that's real. I mean, not the vampires. I think. Who am I to say? I am but a simple mortal. (Caitlin hisses) What's real was the belief
that these exhumations were their best option. Sarah Tillinghast's story
is one of the core stories that forms the basis of the
New England vampire canon, which is a thing. There's gonna be many points in this video where you go, "That's a thing?". Yup. Oh, yeah. It's a thing. These stories are kept alive
hundreds of years later for many reasons. First, there are the popular cultural
depictions of vampires wildly influenced by this
New England vampire panic. (vampire screams) Then there are the
academics and folklorists, like New England vampire
expert, Michael E. Bell, who chart how fear and
superstition motivated behavior in these rural communities. And finally, there are the true
believers, past and present. - [Man] I am a vampire. I do consume human blood. - While we were scouting a
cemetery for this project, I crossed paths with two local teenagers looking for the same vampire
graves I was looking for. I think they were on a date. A spooky date. (upbeat music)
♪ Any time you need love ♪ ♪ Baby, you're in my heart ♪ They immediately launched
into a sincere story about bloodsucking,
mysterious cemetery lights, and angry villagers. (woman screams) - [Teenager] "You know, they're real." - The boy said. - [Teenager] "Vampires." (vampire hisses) - Holy shit! - The pair headed off, hands clasped, on their way to, I don't know, what morbid young people
like to do these days. (gothic rock music) ♪ Bela Lugosi's dead ♪ Do they smoke Djarum blacks outside the goth club like I did when I was young and beautiful. That's how you can tell I'm not a vampire. I'm aging. You're watching me slowly decay through the medium of YouTube. Isn't that profound? (gothic rock music)
♪ Undead, undead, undead ♪ I was jealous of these teens' credulous delight and real belief as they enjoyed their vampire weekend. - Ladies and gentlemen, Vampire Weekend! (upbeat rock music)
♪ Baby, baby right on ♪ ♪ Baby, baby, baby, baby right ♪ - To be clear, the New England vampire panic went far beyond the Tillinghast family. It was a time period from the late 1700s to the late 1800s, when New Englanders, mainly in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and Rhode Island believed that the reason their family and friends were dying non-stop was because of vampires. (eerie music)
- It's like diamonds. - Not tuberculosis, but-- - Say it.
- Vampire. - But where did these beliefs come from? (romantic orchestral music) The answer appears to be Serbia. (The Serbian National Anthem) Serbians have had great
impact on American culture. Nikola Tesla, Novak
Dokovic, Marina Ambramovic, MVP center of the Denver
Nuggets, Nikola Jokic. But the origin for the
new England vampire panic was likely a Serbian
farmer named Arnold Paole. True, vampire like creatures have long existed in folklore traditions, But this was the incident that sparked a whole
European vampire panic, which then carried overseas and became the New England vampire panic. It's all very witch trial. A New England town goes, "Hey, Europe, I see you had some spooky shit going down, ending with the persecution of innocence. We would also like to try it". So, it's the 1720s in Serbia, about 75 years before the
death of Sarah Tillinghast. Arnold Paole was a former
military man turned farmer. He believed, while he
was serving in Kosovo, he had been attacked by a vampire. (vampire growls) (people gasping) Not wanting to become a vampire himself, as folklore warned, Paole allegedly ate dirt
from the vampire's grave and smeared himself
with the vampires blood. As the people in Paole's
town hear the story, they think, "That blood
smearing may have saved you, but it might also have turned you". - What better way to vanquish an enemy than to make him an ally? - After Paole was killed
in a hay wagon accident, townspeople started dying, but not before claiming Paole had been visiting them at night and strangling them. 40 days after Paole's
death, he was exhumed. Supposedly, his body looked fresh and blood flowed from his mouth and nose, filling his coffin. His corpse was staked through the heart, (flesh squelches) decapitated
(metal scrapes) (air whooshes)
(flesh squelches) and burned.
(man screams) Vampire problem (claps) solved. - [Children] Yay! (angelic music) Except that five years later, people in the town started dying again. 17 of them in quick succession. Locals were primed to believe that this was the work of the undead. (gothic rock music)
♪ Undead, undead, undead ♪ Regimental field surgeon
Johannes Fluckinger was sent by the Austrian empire to investigate (speaks German), or "the vampiric condition". (vampire growls) As the story goes, Fluckinger
examined the bodies and interviewed the townspeople. Most of the corpses appeared suspiciously free of decomposition. It was the middle of winter. Tuck that factoid away for later. Fluckinger gave the okay. - [Man] Okay. - To have the alleged vampire corpses beheaded, burned, and the
ashes thrown in the river. He then wrote up a report (speaks Latin) which was given the thumbs up by his team of doctors and officers and handed over to Emperor
Charles VI of the Hapsburgs. He swore that everything he saw. - [Man] "In the matter of vampires is in every way truthful and has been undertaken,
observed, and examined in our own presence." - It was officially declared that the source of this
whole debacle was cows. (cow moos) Wait, what? Oh, vampire cows. (cow moos)
(vampire hisses) Apparently years ago, when
Paoli was still alive, he had sucked the blood of some cows that were then eaten by the townspeople who then became vampires. Fluckinger's report was published and became an unexpected hit, spreading the word "vampire" across Europe and causing other panics to crop up. The existence of vampires
was now being argued by scholars, writers, royalty. - [Woman] What's a vampire? - Even the Pope. At some point in the 18th century, these ideas made their way across the pond to Exeter, Rhode Island. (cow moos) Nearly 100 years after
Sarah Tillinghast died, was exude and had her
heart burned by her family, the Brown family, also of Exeter, was in a similarly grim predicament. (bell tolls) In 1883. George Brown's family began to die of consumption. First, his wife, Mary Eliza,
died at just 36 years old. Then in 1884, their
daughter, Mary Olive, died. In 1891, their son, Edwin,
contracted consumption and was sent off to Colorado with his wife in the hopes that the fresh air and change in climate would heal him. While Edwin was away in Colorado, his sister, Mercy Brown, contracted an aggressive
form of the disease, called Galloping Consumption, and was dead within
months, in January of 1892. She was only 19. Mercy was buried here at Shrub Hill, now Chestnut Hill Cemetery, alongside her mother and sister. Unfortunately, it was looking like Edwin would soon join them. After two years in Colorado, his health wasn't improving, and he came back here to Exeter, basically to die. Once George Brown's neighbors got wind of Edwin's terrible state, they started encouraging him, pressuring him to exhume
his wife and daughters. Because, well, you're
starting to get the reason. - Vampire. - So, one of the Browns, Mary Eliza, Mary Olive, or Mercy was a vampire. We know now what to do
to vampires to stop them. Burning, staking, decapitating, etc. But what exactly was a vampire to the residents of South
County Rhode Island? To a New Englander, you
might be a vampire if, you die, usually younger. Your family and/or
friends start dying too. Your family and/or friends complain of night visitations from you. Your corpse does not appear
to appropriately decay. There's blood in your corpse's heart, liver, lungs, really any major organs. Your family and/or friends
say you're a vampire. Well, they never said you were a vampire. Like, the word "vampire". Here's one of the most
interesting things to me. Even though these undead perpetrators acted like vampires, attacked the living like vampires, didn't decompose like vampires, and were destroyed like vampires, the New Englanders didn't
call them "vampires". They didn't use that actual word, even though it did start appearing in English in the 1730s. New England vampires were a specific category without a name, a sort of generalized undead tomfoolery. Your corpse breaking bad. I'm still going to refer
to them as "vampires" because that's, I mean. I get it, you're wearing glasses, but we know that's you, Superman. (cow moos) Anyway, there were lots of reasons you could be accused of being a vampire. But what function did it serve to accuse anyone of that? A small village like Exeter, Rhode Island, didn't ascribe to Puritanism and other popular belief
systems of the time. Most small town New Englanders were considered heathens by those in the growing cities, with Rhode Island folks
considered especially unruly. Christian missionaries were even sent try and save them.
(angelic music) But they relied on themselves,
and their community, and their own judgment. Before the advent of
antibiotics and vaccines to treat highly contagious diseases, ritual, belief, and
medicine were all one thing. Killing a vampire was medicine. I don't mean that in a
spiritual or intangible sense where the destruction of a
vampire as a symbol of evil would help to heal a family's anguish. This isn't "Chicken Soup for
the Vampire Afflicted Soul". I mean, it was literally
considered a cure for consumption. Kill a vampire, save a life. Or many lives. At the time, consumption
was rampant in New England. It was the leading cause of death. At its worst, one in seven
people would die from it. It was highly contagious and could wipe out entire
families, entire villages. It's easy for us to scoff at
these old timey New Englanders for blaming their troubles on vampires, but when you're watching
your loved ones die, watching them waste away
everyday no matter what you do, don't you start to wonder
if there's something unseen, or maybe even otherworldly,
sucking their life away? (Caitlin hisses) Tuberculosis is an airborne, easily spreadable disease
that affects the lungs, much like some other
highly contagious disease. (melancholy pop music)
♪ Hello darkness ♪ ♪ My old friend ♪ It's spread when an infected person coughs, sneezes, even speaks and tiny droplets are
inhaled by another person. Once infected, a person
can develop a cough, chest pain, fever, chills. As the disease progresses
they may start "wasting away", losing weight, appetite, and
feeling perpetually exhausted. Eventually, a person begins coughing up thick phlegm and blood. (man retches) Essentially, tuberculosis
breaks down the lungs and the afflicted die from
a chest filled with blood and the liquid that once were lungs. It's a long, drawn out,
painful way to die. Watching your community
die from consumption would cause panic and George Brown was being pressured to
do something about it. That's why he enlisted
Exeter's medical examiner, Dr. Harold Metcalf, to help him. The hope was it wouldn't be too late to save his son Edwin. On the morning of March 17, 1892, Mary Eliza, Mary Olive, and Mercy Brown were exhumed right here in the cemetery. Here's what they discovered, according to "The Providence Journal", Mary Eliza was in a state
of complete mummification with no blood in the heart. Mary Olive's body had
decomposed down to a skeleton. With a full, thick head of hair, but a skeleton nonetheless. But Mercy Brown's body was in, quote, "a fairly well preserved state" and, according to some, "in a different position
than she had been buried in". Plus, her liver, another
vampire indicator, was fresh and free of decay. And then there was her heart, (heart beating)
her telltale heart. When Dr. Metcalf cut it open "clotted and decomposed
blood dripped therefrom". Vampire proof. Her heart and liver were placed
on a rock in the cemetery. Maybe that one, or maybe that one, it's hard to tell now, and incinerated. The consumption cure of Mercy's burned heart
and liver mixed with water was fed to Edwin. Shocker, even after that light
inter-familial cannibalism, Edwin did not improve and died in May of that year. I realize I'm one to talk as the lady who ate the ash cake, Here we go! I'm really gonna eat this. (laughs) Really grainy. I don't really have room to criticize what people do with ashes, but there's something about consuming the ashes of the alleged vampire that's very much in keeping with the vampire remains
as medicine mindset. As was often prescribed, once the vampire had been pinpointed and all or part of it incinerated, the ashes would then be somehow consumed by the person or persons
targeted by the vampire. Sometimes, like with the
Browns, it was eaten or drank. Drunk? Drinked? Imbibed. In other cases, the smoke
from the cremation fire would be inhaled. One such case was Nancy Young
of Foster, Rhode Island. Nancy died of consumption
in 1827 at the age of 19. Soon, her sister Almira,
and others in the community began showing symptoms of consumption. The girl's father, Captain Young, brought in the best doctors
to try and treat Almira, but none could help her. Then one day, Almira tells Captain Young that Nancy is coming to her every night, bright, like an angel telling her to join her and that her illness would be over soon. - I won't let the devil into this house. - So, they go to the
Young Family cemetery, exhume Nancy's coffin,
and place it on a pyre. In a heartbreaking image, some sources say Captain Young took his daughter's body out of the coffin himself
and carried her to the pyre. They burned Nancy's body, and Almira and the other sick children, as well as some of the townspeople, gathered around the fire
and inhaled the smoke believing it would cure them, kind of like a supernatural vaccine. Unfortunately, inhaling a
whole bunch of pyre smoke is not really the ideal
situation for children suffering from tuberculosis. The vampire medicine didn't do the trick and Almira died later that year. I know all this talk of vampire medicine can make it sound like the vampire panic happened in some dark distant past, when our passions were ruled by magic, and elders and ignorance, but America in the 18th and 19th centuries was a time of dramatic advancement. The steamboat, the
Transcontinental Railroad, factories, electricity,
and yes, germ theory. Cities like New York and
San Francisco and Chicago became major cosmopolitan centers. To put it in perspective, the year that Mercy
Brown's heart was burned was the same year that Henry Ford built his first gas powered automobile. These blind leaps forward in technology may actually help explain
the vampire panic. Small rural communities refused to conform to more mainstream ideals. choosing to look inward to what had served them for so long. While they weren't correct on
the source of the contagion, can we really blame them for being wary of this new onslaught of
rapacious technology and machines? Influential people in the
Brown's Exeter community truly believed that Edwin could be saved by finding the vampire in his family who was sucking the life out of him. But let's be clear here. Not all Rhode Islanders. Not everyone believed
exhuming and heart burning was the best solution. Big reveal. Neither George Brown nor the medical examiner, Dr. Metcalf, believed in vampires. George agreed to the exhumations just to get his neighbors off his back. But he wasn't there that day. He couldn't bring himself
to attend the exhumation of this wife and daughters. It's also pretty evident that Dr. Metcalf was rolling his eyes over
the exhumation of the Browns. The "Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner" stated that Metcalf was an unbeliever and he did the examination
of the bodies under protest. He agreed to oversee the bodies just to make sure there was a
semblance of professionalism. But why was Mercy's
body so well-preserved? - Vampire. - Important, Mercy had only
been dead for about two months. Even more important,
she had died in January, when the ground was too
frozen to dig her grave. It was very common in the 19th century to keep bodies in "keeps"
or "receiving vaults" til such a time that the spring thaw came and you could actually dig the grave. This is the vault where
Mercy's body was kept, with her grave not that far over there. In the New England winter this would have acted as
natural refrigeration. The ideal temperatures
for corpse preservation. Some accounts say that she was kept here and then briefly moved to the grave, and other accounts say that she was pulled directly from this receiving vault. Either way, with the cool temperature, she would have only
just begun to decompose. Her heart and liver seemed so fresh, because they were fresh. Mercy Brown goes on record as the last of the New England vampires, as well as the most famous. But what made Mercy the
grand turning point? What made her so special? While her story is compelling, it's not all that different from other vampire accounts in the area. The difference was the press. The "Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner" wasn't the only newspaper in the area that covered the Mercy Brown story. A "Providence Journal" reporter was present at the Brown exhumations. Boston-born anthropologist, George Stetson wrote an article for "The
American Anthropologist", published in 1896,
examining the vampire panic. Papers from all over the
US and around the world got wind of the Mercy Brown story with journalists delighting in taking jabs at New Englanders and their "Yankee Vampires". Press from near and far
characterized New Englanders, specifically folks from Rhode Island, dubbed "Vampire Capital of America", as "superstitious simpletons". Theories as to why vampire
panic had gripped the region ranged from the "primitive" influences of Native Americans and Black Americans, to accusations of good old
"back country inbreeding". European papers called the vampire panic a specifically "American problem", completely skipping over
the fact that vampire lore came over directly with
the European immigrants a century earlier. Mercy Brown captured
the public imagination. She was young, female, an innocent. Even the name, Mercy, was
just too good to be true. This young, sick woman never knew it, but she was about to become
the proto-pop culture vampire. - Leave these others and come to me. (dramatic boom) (woman moans) - As the story goes, an
Irish theater manager heard about what was
happening in Rhode Island, and poor Mercy Lena Brown, and was inspired to write what would become his defining work. The man's name? Bram Stoker. The book? "Dracula." (vampire growls) It's speculated that
Stoker's character of Lucy is based on Mercy Brown, Lucy being a portmanteau
of Mercy and Lena. The parallels are all there. In Stoker's book, Lucy is
slowly fed upon by Dracula, wasting away in a "consumptive" fashion. Despite getting fresh
air, rest, and good food she grows pale and thin
and gasps for breath. Eventually, Lucy dies and is buried, and when exhumed her body is found to be, "Seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her funeral. She was if possible more
radiantly beautiful than ever and I could not believe she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than before, and on the cheeks there
was a delicate blossom". Lucy, like Mercy, had been
transformed into a vampire. Of course, Stoker wasn't the only author to see Mercy as a muse. (ominous music) This house behind me, on Benefit Street in Providence, was immortalized in horror master and pretty much canceled
racist HP Lovecraft's short story, "The Shunned House". Lovecraft writes quite evocatively of a vampire in the
basement of this house, referencing the Exeter
vampires, Mercy Brown, even naming one of the characters Mercy. "What, then, but some exotic emanation, some vampirish vapor
such as Exeter rustics tell of as lurking over
certain churchyards?" Most people these days don't remember Mercy Brown or Sarah Tillinghast, but the New England vampires so pervade our horror, our lore, even the corpse fear that
dominates popular culture. In Anne Rice's "Interview
with the Vampire", the child vampire, Claudia,
has her family destroyed by an epidemic in late 1700s New Orleans. Rice calls it "the plague",
but historically speaking it was more likely
influenza or yellow fever. Young Claudia herself becomes a predator, the plague providing convenient
cover for her vampirism. She is only stopped when
her body turns to ash. (ash crumbles) Rice's vampires are consistently described as "preternaturally
beautiful", "enticing", and "sophisticated", which makes them even more dangerous. Of course, Rice's books weren't the first to explore the thirst trap vampire trope, emphasis on thirst. - I want some more. (Caitlin hisses) - Joseph Sheriden Le Fanu's
1872 novella, "Carmilla", is a sexy, suggestive, queer vampire story and so good, that's my book recc for the season. (angelic music) "Dracula" definitely has its
seductive moments as well, but Rice paved the way for the likes of "Twilight"
and "True Blood". - Suck it. - We tend to attribute vampire
lore to Eastern Europe, Vlad the Impaler etc, so forth, and yes, much folklore
was generated there, but our modern vampire is
actually very American. From Lovecraft, to Rice,
to Stephanie Meyer, to Stephen King, to Buffy, to Blade. Even Stoker, who was Irish, was partially inspired
by Exeter, Rhode Island. Rhode Island. - Rhode Island, AKA Hollywood. - I'm not trying to diminish all the rich folklore
that gave us vampires, but in this, I guess you could call it "second wave vampirism", there is something incredibly American about trying to take bloated
half-decomposing blood sacks, and make them sexy. (woman exhales) This switcheroo gets to the heart of what interests me about vampires. From the original folklore,
to Serbia, to New England, no doubt the fears were
connected to this unknowable, seemingly unpredictable dead body. As the human body decays, blood or dark-colored fluid purge coming from the nose and mouth are not uncommon. Gas builds up, organs liquefy and the purge is pushed
out of open orifices. If you opened up someone's grave expecting to see a desiccated
corpse, or a skeleton, but instead see a blackened
body dripping liquids? Vampire. (vampire growls) Top layers of skin can slough
off a corpse as it decays, revealing reddish skin underneath that looks fresh and smooth, even though the corpse could be long dead. Skin often pulls back as it dehydrates revealing longer nails and larger teeth. Vampire, vampire, vampire. (vampire growls) There's also telltale
plumpness of a vampire body. As the belly distends, the body looks suspiciously like it's been out in the night feeding. The little dribble of blood coming out the corner of the mouth completes the tableau. If you're a 19th century farmer who's not up on the
science of decomposition and is out to find a vampire, this is all the proof you're gonna need. Decomposition was it. It was the misunderstood enemy, the source of the fear. But how has Western culture taken this bloated vengeful blood monster and extended the lore, the vampire cinematic universe, so masterfully to include immortal life and these cold, charming, sexy beauties. (woman exhales) If you thought I wasn't gonna connect this to the rise of the funeral industry then I don't think we
can hang out any more. When all you have is a funeral
industrial complex hammer everything looks like a nail, folks. But I'm right. Hear me out. What else has been happening, starting right around
the era of Mercy Brown, continuing through the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of this Americanized uber sexy vampire? The arrival of the funeral
industry and embalming. Scholar Janie Scendura argued, quite to my delight, as you can imagine, that Dracula himself is an embalmer, draining blood from his victims, replacing the blood with toxins and preserving the body forever. Through embalming, the undertaker "literally create a
corpse resistant to decay, literally obscures
distasteful signs of death". From that perspective, it's no longer the decay of the corpse
that scares us so much. With the rise of embalming
and preserving our dead, it's the lack of decay that scare us. The bizarre, uncomfortable immortality. The potency of what makes vampires scary has shifted as our corpses have shifted. Scendura notes that the
ability to preserve bodies, make them immortal, "Was precisely the attribute that made embalming so disturbing to Victorians". They were anxious about the
final product embalming created. "An uncanny corpse that
seemed never to die." (dramatic boom) (eerie music) So, it's November of 1990 and three boys are playing at a sand and gravel pit
in Griswold, Connecticut. They go rolling and tumbling down a hill and, as they do, two human skulls roll down the hill with them. The boys told a grown-up as you should do when you
find a skull, children, and the grown-ups told the authorities. At first the area was taped off by police, as they believed the skulls could be additional victims of recently discovered local serial killer, Michael Ross. (dramatic boom) But, upon further examination, it turned out that the
skulls found at the sand pit were over 100 years old. The boys had inadvertently stumbled upon the long forgotten Walton family cemetery. Archeologists, led by Nick Bellantoni, found 27 bodies belonging
to the Walton family, who had lived in the Griswold area in the 17th and 18th centuries. But that wasn't all. While most of the remains
were buried in pine boxes, two sets of the remains
were buried in, essentially, brick and stone vaults. The coffins in these
vaults showed only initials and the age when they died, spelled out in brass tacks. One of them was a teenager, "NB-13", and one was a 55-year-old man, identified only as "JB-55". (dramatic boom) What else is interesting about this story? Oh, "JB-55" was apparently a vampire. (vampire growls) When the archeologist Bellantoni
lifted pieces of stone to reveal what was left
of the red-painted coffin and the human remains within, he was surprised to find that the body had been rearranged. The head had been removed and sat with the thighbones
on top of the ribcage. "It looked like a
skull-and-crossbones motif, a Jolly Roger" Bellantoni said, "I'd never seen anything like it". While the other bodies from the cemetery were prepared for reburial,
JB's remains were sent to the National Museum of
Health and Medicine in DC for further testing. Looking into the history of the area, Bellantoni got into contact with the folklorist Michael E. Bell. To Bell, who has documented at least 80 vampire exhumations in New England, the state of JB's remains was consistent with how the body of an alleged vampire might have been treated
in 1800s Connecticut. Burning the organs or body was the best way to kill the hungry fiend, but if the heart or organs
couldn't be accessed the corpse was ritualistically rearranged to stop the dead from
coming after the living. Piecing together JB's
history from his bones, it was likely that he was a farmer, bones arthritic from hard work, who died of tuberculosis. His illness was so severe
that it scarred his ribs. JB was buried after death,
but because of vampire fears was dug up at a later date, late enough that his heart
had completely decomposed, so there was nothing to burn. Instead they decapitated
him, arranged his skeleton in the "crossbones" fashion
Bellantoni discovered, and reburied him. Exhuming JB for the second time brought the people of
New England face-to-face with the only intact
archeological evidence of the vampire panic. But who was JB? (vampire growls) That was a harder tale to tell. In the early 90s, when
JB's remains were found, DNA technology was not advanced
enough to identify him. However, in 2019, thanks to the National Museum of Health and Medicine and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System's DNA laboratory, JB was identified using Y-chromosomal DNA profiling and genealogy data. JB-55 can now confidently
be named as John Barber. It was also discovered that "NB-13", the body of the teenager
found near Barber's, was likely his son, Nathan Barber. We reached out to the National
Museum of Health and Medicine and they told us that as of now, John Barber's remains
are still in their care. They're attempting to
track down his descendants. It is Bellantoni's hope that someday soon, John Barber will be buried again for the third and final time. (eerie music) In 1992 the Walton family was reburied here, at Hopeville Cemetery, without John Barber, who
remains at the museum. There's no obvious headstones, but they were buried in
the same configuration they were in in the
Walton family cemetery. My hope is that John Barber, who died of consumption, was buried, dug up, decapitated, had his bones rearranged
because of vampire panic, was buried again, dug up again, bones studied for science, he deserves to just rest in peace. (bell tolls) It's easy to see vampires
as a Halloween costume, as fun and kitsch
because they're not real. Well, unless you're one
of many people on YouTube that identify as a vampire, which, don't start down that rabbit hole if you value your time. - If you're a real vampire, why are you wearing
fake contacts and fangs? - [Woman] He's also a dentist
at a normal dental office, which helps qualify him
as an expert fangsmith. - But we have to remember that the kitsch, the glamor, the immortality,
the sexual energy, is all born of a tremendous fear of death, and fear of the dead body
that affected real people. I would never try to vampire police you or tell you not to enjoy vampires, in some ways this entire video is about enjoying the concept of vampires. I just think it's fascinating to learn about the real people who had to be deeply misunderstood post mortem for this cultural mythology to develop the way it has and continues to. (thunder cracks) (ominous music) (Caitlin hisses) This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. (spooky music)
Askamortician is a GREAT channel!